We present evidence that measures of "social cohesion," such as income inequality and ethnic fractionalization, endogenously determine institutional quality, which in turn causally determines growth. Copyright 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Although a large literature argues that European settlement outside of Europe shaped institutional, educational, technological, cultural, and economic outcomes, researchers have been unable to directly assess these predictions because of an absence of data on colonial European settlement. In...

We are all aware of the extreme hunger and poverty that afflict the world's poor. We hear the facts, see the images on television, buy the T-shirt and are moved as individuals and governments to dig deep into our pockets. Yet what happens to all this aid? Why after 50 years and $2.3 trillion are...

La estructura del modelo se puede explicar examinando sus tres componentes claves: el método contable, las ecuaciones de comportamiento y las reglas de proyección de las variables y la elección de variables residuales que exigen las partidas contables. A manera de ejemplo, se presentarán...

We establish the following stylized facts: (1) Exports are characterized by Big Hits, (2) the Big Hits change from one period to the next, and (3) these changes are not explained by global factors like global commodity prices. These conclusions are robust to excluding extractable products (oil...

"The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section uses times series techniques to identify the impact of NAFTA on the income gap between Mexico and the United States. To deal with the big-events little- time problem, we apply two time series methods. First, we follow Harvey in...

Foreign aid critics, supporters, recipients, and donors have produced eloquent rhetoric on the need for better aid practices—has this translated into reality? This paper attempts to monitor the best and worst of aid practices among bilateral, multilateral, and UN agencies. We create aid...